New Comic: Duplicity

Tycho: I don't know exactly how prevalent "Sony Style" stores are. I know of exactly one in my town, and one in another town. If you have one close, if such a thing exists, you should certainly make it a point to penetrate their outer defenses and watch their astounding 3D demo reel. I've seen plenty of demos for 3D televisions, really quite a lot of them, and they've never managed to accomplish what this one did. I watched it fully three times through. Glasses were limited, which mean that husbands would wear them while wives knit their brows. Like Feminist ...

New Comic: Our Partial Future

Tycho: What I think is probably the best, best, best Blamimation yet can be found by clicking here. (CW)TB

Tycho: As seen here. You should be careful about any kind of celebration, though: the third paragraph tells you why. They're still tying incredibly useful Battle.net functionality to it, so this is the Public Relations equivalent of Aikido. (Aikido is a martial art that leverages your opponent's natural momentum. Trust me, it's an incredible analogy.) (CW)TB

New Comic: The Grim Curriculum

Tycho: Blizzard's RealID thing didn't make any sense to me, but that's because I was relying on the official message to get a sense of it's purpose. It's a much more straightforward when you read the article at USAToday's Game Hunters entitled "Blizzard and Facebook's friendly social networking deal launches with 'StarCraft II'." If I thought I could top this comment over at MetaFilter, I would do so. I can't. The RealID thing is a bad idea that won't work. If it were merely a bad idea, or merely wouldn't work, maybe there'd be something in it. Accountability is crucial - ...

Tycho: Oh, I remember what we were talking about, prior to our dark fugue: Laurell K. Hamilton. Okay, yeah. That explains all this, then. You're safe, now; these are the only comics in this theme. You're safe. When Cliff Bleszinski says that shooters are the future of RPGs, he's not wrong; late, but not wrong. The original Modern Warfare is as much an RPG as any other game that toils under that yoke. Play it, and tell me it's not: you earn levels and equip items, customizing your character along three distinct trees. In the sequel, even your Goddamned perks level ...

New Comic: The Butcher's Bill, Part Two

New Comic: The Butcher's Bill, Part One

Tycho: Gabriel and I were talking, about something - I forget what - when we fell into a black slumber. Through the sludge of our waking stupor, we discovered that not one but two comics had been written and produced. Here is the first; prepare to be progressively harrowed. Still thinking about Horde. No, not that Horde, but if we're watching Kirk Cameron videos we might as well watch the best one. Anyway, wrong Horde. I found my time with ODST's Firefight more enjoyable than most iterations of the concept, and I've tried to figure out why that might be, because ...

Tycho: Would you like some of that? Because we have a new episode. No, really! (CW)TB

New Comic: Twisp & Catsby in: Der Dorbelgorbel

Tycho: We put the word out - technically, a chirp - regarding what people might like to see in a comic. That is a rare request, truly, but while we're out of town for the Fourph of July you might as well get an approximation of what you actually want. Twisp & Catsby were the winners by far, followed by Annarchy and Div, though there was also a pronounced Wil Wheaton contingent(!). Sometimes, though, we don't get what we want. Case in point: I suggested to Gabriel that we execute on a "Broodax on Fraternity Row" type scenario, called either "Dudax" ...

Gabe: In my last news post I talked about how I actually built the planets for my Elemental Chaos encounter. In this post I’ll talk a little bit about the actual mechanics of the fight. Tycho and I went and got some lunch and I explained what I wanted to do. The two of us ended up building an encounter that my players really had a good time with. You can see the basic structure in the photos. I had the ice planet and the fire planet on opposite ends of the table. In the middle of them was a small ...